Clara A. Verweij, MA, MBA, serves as the Administrative Director of the Michigan Nanotechnology Institute for Medicine and Biological Sciences. She has helped to build the Institute from the ground up and coordinates and serves the multidisciplinary Faculty and staff. She works on the implementation of programs that build the educational and research missions of the Institute.

She has worked as a research administrator with Dr. Baker in the Department of Internal Medicine and the MNIMBS since march 1997. She has successfully served as the administrator for several large multi-disciplinary projects involving different Departments, different Schools and subcontractors from different organizations, including corporations, institutes and other universities. Major projects that Ms. Verweij has managed include a DARPA funded project, a multidisciplinary NCI Unconventional Innovations Program project to develop new therapeutics for cancer based on the dendritic polymer architecture, a multidisciplinary NASA project for biosensor development, and a RCE project to develop adjuvant vaccines for smallpox and anthrax. She also manages a new multi-disciplinary and international project team assembled to develop a needle-free nanoemulsion-based vaccine delivery system for Hepatitis B. This project is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation under the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative. The participating institutions are the University of Michigan; Northwestern University and colleagues at the Centre National Hospitalier de Fann in Dakar, Senegal; Stanford University; the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute (in collaboration with the University of New Mexico); and NanoBio, Corp., which will assist with FDA-IND regulations for the toxicology studies and vaccine studies to determine appropriate data collection and documentation required to ensure rapid regulatory approval. The scientific team is multifunctional, with each individual bringing unique and highly specialized skills to the project. This provides a unique mix of capabilities that may not be available at a single university in the country.

Ms. Verweij first earned a Masters degree in English Language and Literature at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands. She achieved a Ph.D. Candidacy at the Rackham School of Graduate Studies of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with a specialization in American Literature and American Intellectual History. She then earned a Masters of Business Administration at the University of Michigan Stephen M. Ross School of Business Administration, where she graduated with Distinction in 1995. She has experience with project management in the private sector as well as with research and general administration at the University of Michigan since early 1997.